Two shooting attacks within 10 hours of each other left two civilians dead and five Danish police officers injured at a meeting on freedom of speech and a synagogue in Copenhagen before and after midnight Saturday, Feb. 14. Early Sunday, police kiled a man at the nearby Norrebro railway station when he opened fire. They seek to establish whether he was one of the shooters and if indeed the two attacks were connected. People were warned Sunday to stay off the streets as armed terrorists were at large.

The new Saudi King Salman bin Abdulaziz pledged continuity for the kingdom’s oil and other policies in his first speech Friday, Jan. 23, following the death of his half-brother King Abdullah. The late king, a strong, shrewd and measured ruler, navigated the kingdom on a steady course in a turbulent neighborhood. He also made sure the succession would be smooth, swift and safe for the long term. Abdullah was also largely responsible for plunging oil prices by refusing to cut production. King Salman will have to stand up to heavy arm-twisting bythe US, Iran and Russia for ending this policy.

Belgian security and special operations units raided 10 apartments in the eastern town of Verviers and Brussels Thursday, Jan. 15, in search of native jihadis back from Syria who had formed cells to carry out what federal prosecutors called terrorist attacks “on a grand scale,” similar to the terrorist violence that swept Paris last week. In Verviers, two ISIS-linked jihadis were killed and one arrested after they opened fire on the forces. Explosions and gunshots were heard from the clash. One police source said: “We have averted a Belgian Charlie Hebdo.”

Four hostages held by Islamist gunmen at a Jewish grocery store in Paris were reported dead Friday, Jan. 9 by French police, shortly after a rescue operation that killed the gunman, Amedy Coulibaly, who earlier shot dead a policewoman. Other captives were set free. Minutes before, Said and Cherif Kouachi died in a shooting attack on the police siege force at a factory near Dammartin-en-Goelle, 40 km northeast of Paris. The two Charlie Hebdo killers were holed up there threatening to “die as martyrs” with their hostage before going on the offensive.

The US attempted to forge a new bloc of Turkey, Qatar, Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood to counterbalance Iranian power, but Morsi’s ouster as Egyptian president put an end to the short-lived alliance.

That Israel has no answer for attacks from Syrian territory was apparent from its response to the bombing Tuesday, March 18 of the Golan Post 104, which injured four paratroopers – one seriously - the fourth such attack this month. Artillery and rockets were directed at a Syrian army post near Quneitra followed by air strikes. Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon held the Assad regime responsible.debkafile: Holding a sovereign state responsible for terrorist action from its soil never worked in Gaza and will only lead to a war of attrition in the north.

The Lebanese Shiite Hizballah, itself a listed terrorist group, was forced Thursday, Feb. 13 to cancel its most solemn annual event in memory of fabled “special security chief” Imad Mughniyeh for fear of terrorist attack. Hassan Nasrallah traditionally addresses these events. debkafile’s counter-terror sources report that al Qaeda and Sunni extremists have since last July carried out 10 suicide bombings, claiming scores of lives in Beirut and across Lebanon. Security is doubled up for Nasrallah and other top operatives on a tip that they are gunning for them in person.

Eilat come under missile attack from Sinai every few days, like Gaza’s Israeli neighbors - harmlessly thus far. But the Red Sea tourist resort is paying for Prime Minister Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yaalon’s short-sighted policy of security and intelligence cooperation with Egypt’s Gen. Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi. Direct action against Gaza and Sinai terror has passed into Egyptian hands. This gap in Israel’s security has been seized on by the Islamist Ansar Bayt al-Maqdis terrorists to take the country hostage against El-Sisi’s counter-terror offensive.

debkafile Exclusive: Iran is to urgently rebuild Hizballah’s intelligence and security mechanisms after the ravages caused by suicide attacks on its Beirut and Beqaa strongholds since joining the Syrian war. A secret Iranian Al Qods-Ministry of Intelligence team assigned to the task arrived secretly in Beirut last week, after a top-level Iranian-Hizballah conference concluded that the Lebanese group’s security and intelligence can’t take much more battering without folding. The Iranians will also build Hizballah’s fighting units in Syria a new field intelligence arm.

Nasrallah secretly visited to Tehran to discuss plans for avenging the bombing of the Iranian embassy in Beirut of which they accuse the Saudi intelligence chief. Iran and Hizballah are bent on revenge.

Secretary of State John Kerry put before Israelis and Palestinians Thursday, Dec. 5, a new security plan combining the US war on al Qaeda with the security provisions promised Israel in a settlement with the Palestinians, debkafile reports exclusively. Israeli and Palestinian units would be integrated in a planned regional US-led force for securing parts of Syria, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Palestinian territory and Israel against terror. It would consist also of US, British, French, Saudi, Jordanian and Egyptian units. Netanyahu was open to the idea; Abbas had reservations.

The gunning down of Hajj Hassan Hollo al-Laqqis, a high-ranking Hizballah commander and close crony of Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah raised the stakes of the clandestine war between Saudi Arabia and Iran - or rather between Saudi intelligence chief Prince Bandar bin Sultan and Iran’s Al Qods Brigades commander Qassem al-Soleimani. Hizballah blamed Israel for the assassination because it is easier to reach for revenge than Saudi Arabia. Al-Laqqis was killed in the underground parking lot of his home by five shots to the head and throat.

President Uhuru Kenyatta is quoted as blaming the United States and Israel in private conversation for their undercover agencies’ failure to prevent the major terrorist attack on Nairobi’s Westgate shopping mall on Sept. 21. He counted on them for a heads-up, only to find they were as much in the dark as Nairobi. Israeli security sources are digging hard to find out how Al Qaeda spies conducted surveillance forays in the mall – and even smuggled in large stocks of ammo – without Israel intelligence detecting them or sounding the alarm.

Al Qaeda’s attack on the Westgate shopping mall was minutely prepared in two years of intelligence-gathering, detailed planning and multinational recruitment spreading over four continents – North America, Europe, Africa and the Middle East. This complex, sophisticated and labor-intensive terrorist operation was an eye-opener, showing how far Al Qaeda had upgraded its capabilities since Sept. 11, 2001. Yet no Western counterterrorism agency saw it coming. The DEBKA Weekly issue out next Friday exposes in detail and analyses the shocking scope of the Nairobi attack.

Five Grads hit Beersheba and a shell explodes in Metulah on the Lebanese border minutes after
the announcement in Cairo by Egyptian foreign minister Mohamed Kamel Amr and US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in Cairo Wednesday, Nov. 21. A statement from Israel’s Binyamin Netanyahu, Ehud Barak and Avigdor Lieberman follows half an hour before the ceasefire is due to go into effect at 9 p.m. debkafile: Prime Minister earlier called President Barack Obama to inform him of Israel’s consent to the ceasefire.

Obama is keen on Muslim Brotherhood collaboration in the war on al Qaeda and other terrorists, including those sponsored by Tehran, and offered to build a hi-tech security radar fence to defend the Suez Canal from the terrorists and smugglers infesting Sinai.

CIA director David Petraeus arrived in Cairo to lead a new anti-terror campaign against al Qaeda in cooperation with Egyptian security. It was launched after the discovery that Ayaman al-Zawahiri has set in motion a new wave of terror after reconstituting his old Egyptian Islamic Jihad and turning Sinai into his hub of operations.